Running better

Just improved the run cycle a little.

Monkeys are horses

I was wrong!!!!!! monkeys doesnt run like cats and dogs at all! they bounce off the ground the same way a horse does....
And the same way us humans do actually. Try it. Try running on all four and you will see.
So i had to do a new run cycle. And this way is much harder to animate.
Here is my first attempt:

Bapp test run cycle animation motion ocean

Matt finished his wonderful rig for Bap, so now i am gonna have fun playing with it, getting to know it, in order to animate effectively with it.
With Matts help, we ironed out some kinks and then it was time to test animate!



From previous knowledge of how all our four legged friends move, i know that they fly stretched out, catches every "leap" with their front "legs" and actually "LEAPS" with their back legs.
The top animation is from the previous one i did.
now im going to do the same thing, but with minimal effort and adjustments.

First going to put bap in a pose i know is going to be there. since i know he is not a horse, he will be flying with legs and arms stretched out from his body. so thats the pose ill start with.















The next keyframe should be where he catches with his arms at which point his legs should be bent as they are still on their way forward to continue momentum :)
And well put it on frame 5.




THEN, the next keyframe would be the first one`s opposite... sort of. Where hes in between legs, and in "mid air".
And well put this one on frame 10.
(back legs moving forward (momentum) and front legs semi backwards as if they just forced the whole body through the air (which is exactly what they did).




Then we need the back legs touching the ground.



Notice that his butt should be close to the ground, but his torso further up. This is because this keyframe is the exact moment where he pushes off the ground to go into the next frame aka the last frame aka the first frame :P
Now just give him a bit of body movement and BOOM... run cycle!




Ok its pretty bad at the moment, but its just to show that you can put together a run cycle relatively quick. But this one would need a LOT of improvement. and tweaking.

Anyway, we are still on the "testing-rigs-phase", so im itching to get to animate something proper sooon!

20000011

Happy new year!

Thought i needed to do some animating, so i did two small ones today. One fat guy jumping and another guy dancing :)

Heavy weight walk

Just made my first heavy weight walk.

MonkeyFIT!

Animated monkey having a hysteric fit. Consisting of the classic "jump and smack ground" followed by an attemmpt at a wallflip and finished off with a gorilla like display of "im the MAN/APE".

The first part was simpler yesterday. But then Georg pointed out that due to the monkey`s size and weight of hands, his lower body would most likely leave the ground after such impacts from the hands. And that was a good observation, because when i added that, i can see how it gives much more overall life to the character. At that time at least.







When i was happy with the first part, i made the jump on the wall, then the gorilla chest punching.
There is something wrong with the jump and the landing. cant put my finger on what it is. And i worked alot on it, but i cant make it better!

I was originally going to have him walk angry towards the camera for a few steps, but i figured i might as weell go straigh into the gorilla move.






Then i added some facial animation and called it a day.

Monke see, monkey do

I tried to animate a monkey walk cycle.
This was pretty forward and similar to a human walk except for a few things.

1. Monkeys walk with their hands AND feet. They balance their weight between the leg and the arm that is touching the ground.

2. Monkeys lean forward quite a bit to get the weight divided between legs and arms.

3. A lot of shoulder movement when leaning on the arms.

Here is my very simple monkey walk:




Mine does`nt actually look like he is leaning on his hands. They`re too long!!
Gorillas usually have relatively straight arms (the one their leaning on) while walking. For this one to be doing that, he would be standing straight, and NOT look like a gorilla. But he isnt anyway, he is a chimp.
We are going for a gorilla look animationwise so that willl need more researh into how they move. I think disneys Tarzan would be great to watch. tonight.

EDIT:

I tried to fix the animation a bit. Adden some upper torso rotation and set the movement a the hands a bit off from before ( to make the hands touch the ground sooner).#


It looks a bit better, though a lot of improvement could be done.
I am going to look at gorillas now and how they run.